mosquito hell

If insects gross you out, please don’t read any further. If you don’t mind killing the occasional mosquito, or fifty, read on.

This morning Kiddo#1 put forth his theory that mosquitoes were created by Satan, although when I asked him to clarify, he agreed they were not exactly created, but rather that Satan had evolved a lovely insect, which we no longer know, and turned it into the army of flying blood-suckers currently clinging to the outside of our house.

We live in the Swamp. With a creek stagnating in our back yard, it’s not hard to figure out we’ll have a lot of mosquito activity. The county will come through for free and bomb my property with pesticides whenever I call them. Sometimes they have helicopters just do it anyhow, for kicks and giggles. (If you’re lucky, they tell you first.) And I know from our previous two years here that the mosquito population has a brief late-springtime surge because the mosquitos mature faster than the things that eat mosquitos.

Yesterday, every window screen was covered in mosquitos. By “covered” I mean at least thirty mosquitos per window. All day.

Last night, I did a sweep of the bedroom before going to sleep, but at 11 I was out of bed because I could hear them. Not that high-pitched whine when they buzz by your ear (although I got that too) but a lower, constant buzz.

I sat up with the lights on, waiting. During the next twenty minutes, I’d kill twelve of them.

I checked all the windows to make sure the screens were in place. And when I went into the bathroom, the window was open and I could see mosquitos clinging to the screen. There had to be a hundred of them, just hanging there. And when I got close, I could hear them.

That low, throbbing hum. Exactly what I heard in my bed. So I shut the window, and I shut every window in the bedroom. And so help me, I could still hear them through the glass.

That nearly drove me over the edge. The thought of all these humming, buzzing insects covering the outside of my house. Eventually I put in ear plugs in order to sleep at all.

At four, I woke up and found my Patient Husband killing mosquitos (we got three more) and when I got up for real, the kids and I killed about ten. Plus I trapped and released a wasp that had gotten inside too.

My Patient Husband said, “Do you know anywhere that doesn’t have mosquitoes?”  I said, “That place where they filmed March of the Penguins?”

They’re back on the screens now. Anyone know a realtor in Antarctica?

0 Comments

  1. Mary333

    Hee! Hee! Kiddo #1 is pretty smart if you ask me! I got 5 mosquito bites in 5 minutes on my deck last night. We also have a lot of water in our area, plus we live near the woods so the mosquitoes are vicious around here!
    Good luck Jane – those nasty little bugs are impossible to get rid of unless you have a large hairy spider population to go along with it 🙂

    1. philangelus

      Let me tell you, there was one EXTREMELY satisfied-looking spider sitting on the window screen a couple hours after I posted this. And no more mosquitoes. So I’m not sure if he ate them or scared them off, but I’m fine with that.

      Today we’re starting to get dragonflies, so I’m hoping they take down the population a bit.

  2. littlehouseofpenguins

    Supposedly you can make a garlic concoction to spray around your property and the mosquitoes will stay away. I have no idea if it actually works, though! Wow, that sounds awful. Reminds me of the robotic insect scene from one of the last “Left Behind” books.

    Oh, and I share your son’s theory. I think mosquitoes must be a creation that was perverted by Satan.

  3. Cricket

    Ah, for the days when we were too naively optimistic to realize Pic and Raid were toxic to humans. And before West Nile.

    They’ve discovered why bed nets work well in some malaria-stricken areas but not in others. Some breeds of mosquitoes bite during the daytime, others mostly at night.

  4. Monica

    !!! Maybe some bat houses?

  5. Diana

    Colorado Springs is bug free, I believe. It’s the altitude. They can’t live there.

    1. diinzumo

      It wasn’t in my experience living there. And in higher elevations, where my relatives have cabins, I swear the mosquitoes are capable of drilling through a down jacket.

  6. The Sojourner

    Kiddo#1’s theory is kind of Tolkien-esque. I like it.

    But also: EWWWW.